To Galaxy
by Spudtron98
Summary: Artemis had a plan. He always did. This one, however, was no heist or getaway. It was something on a far larger scale. His will had contained a certain gift for Foaly, and it was the key to it all. It is time to ascend. Please note that updates will *not* be regular.
1. When there's a Will, there's a way

Chapter One: _When there's a Will, there's a way_

* * *

It had taken quite a bit of work, but The Lower Elements was finally back on its feet. New Arc Reactors had been put online to replace the backup geothermal plants, buildings were repaired and put back into service, and life underground could resume as close to normal a city some ten kilometres below ground could be. The loss of Koboi's equipment had been a great blow, but the factories were already rolling out replacements at such a high rate that soon there would be no holes in the Fairy's capabilities at all. Much of the effort put to this recovery came from one centaur: Foaly. He and his technologies had prevented or minimalized a large amount of damage, finally earning him the well-deserved commendation from the Council that he had been awaiting for the last ten years. Now, his beloved Ops Booth had been fully repaired, with new screens, scanners, comms arrays, and much more. It felt like home again, if said home was a rather cramped technological vault of a room. At this point in time Foaly was loading a new program into the system, the final part of an improved communications network that was unaffected by magma flares in the chutes. A sharp rapping on the reinforced door, followed by the distinctive twang of Captain Brownik's voice over the speakers, interrupted his staring at the progress bar.

"Hey, Foaly, a letter just came in. Direct from the surface, and written on paper, if you'll believe that. It's safe, as the scanners haven't found anything off about it. Nothing wrong in the chemical makeup, no electronics, nothing. Just good ol' paper and ink. You want it?"

Foaly was rather confused. Who, possibly, would send him a _letter_? What was wrong with a nice e-mail? And from the surface too, which would mean either a Fairy topside or… a Fowl. But Artemis was dead, his clone currently growing in Foaly's old Section 8 lair. Butler had withdrawn a fair bit, no way he sent it either. Intriguing…

"Alright," Foaly said, unlocking the door, "come in. Let's see just what this here is."

In stepped Brownik, envelope in hand. He was still in full armour, which was rather scratched up and had a decent sized scorch mark right in the centre of the breastplate. Foaly raised an eyebrow.

"Tried to break up a fight between a few Demons and Goblins," he explained. "Turns out that someone on one of the sides ended up mistaking someone else's eggs for her own, but I couldn't work out who actually started it before things got messy. That's the interrogator's job, I guess. I tried to deescalate the mess, shot the first guy to throw a fireball, took one myself, then got tackled by a Demon and thrown across the street. I had to stun the lot. Going to need some armour resurfacing at any rate, because this scorch is still a little smoky… So anyway, I headed back to Central to finish my shift only to find this here letter at the front desk. One of the staffers handed it to me and said to bring it down to you."

Foaly took the envelope and turned it over in his hands. It was basically unmarked, save for a "Provide to Foaly" label written on the front. Strange. Well, may as well see what's inside. He pulled open the flap and shook out the letter, which was folded with almost machine-like precision. A quick unfold revealed the neat, cursive writing of… Artemis Fowl. You know, the one who was dead. Dead men couldn't write letters.

"Huh. That there's from the boy genius? The dead one? Yeah, that's weird. Well, if you need me, I'll be in the armory for the next fifteen minutes. After that, call me on mobile," said Brownik, as he spun and stepped out the door. Foaly made a slight nod towards him, eyes still fixated on the on the paper in his hands. He realized that he hadn't even started reading the damn thing yet. Firstly, though, he had to work out just how this letter was a thing right now. He fed it into a scanner, which soon showed that the ink had been bonded to the paper about four months ago, which was consistent with that one fateful night. So, mystery solved. Artemis wrote this _before_ his death. Now, to see what it actually said…

 _This is The Last Will and Testament of Artemis Fowl the Second, being the wishes of Artemis Fowl in the event of his death at the hands of the Pixie Opal Koboi. Should he remain alive for forty-eight hours after the writing, this will become null and void and shall have no legal weight in any court, Human or Fairy._

 _I, Artemis Fowl the Second, of exceedingly sound mind and reasonably sound body, bequeath a portion of my estate and advice to my three Fairy friends as follows:_

 _To the centaur Foaly, I leave the blueprints to an interstellar craft so advanced; it makes his spacecraft look like hot air balloons. I have hidden the designs in his own system where he would never think to look for them._

Foaly's curiosity was piqued and his ego stoked. Oh really? Was Artemis using his own will to make fun of him?

 _To find them, he must open his own security file on me, blink eight times, and say the words "Artemis Fowl is smarter than I am". If this does not work, then at least I will smile in the afterlife._

Oh, now he'd done it. Foaly's eye twitched violently. That… little… ooooh, if Artemis hadn't been dead already he would have had to deal with the wrath of a pissed off centaur. Was he _really_ using his own death as yet another opportunity to stamp on Foaly's ego? There were two other segments to the will, addressed to Holly and Mulch. That could wait until tomorrow, when they were both in the area. He placed the letter back in its envelope and put it on his desk. There was no way that he was going to say… that. _No. Way._

 _One week later_

"Artemis Fowl is smarter than I am."

These words had been under lock and key in Foaly's brain, but eventually his curiosity had broken them out of vocabulary prison and given them control of his tongue. Was there actually a hidden file? Or was Artemis just pulling his leg? Well, _something_ was happening on his computer. A file icon had appeared right in the middle of the screen, and Foaly didn't even have time to click it when it opened itself. A video player came up. It was Artemis. The time stamp suggested that this was about shortly before his final confrontation, and he was sitting in his admittedly quite nice office. He spoke.

"Ah, Foaly, so you did follow my instructions. Well, that's good, because this is not a trick. The passphrase was simply a test of faith, if you will. If anything, I consider you to be an equal to me, and because of that I shall entrust to you an interesting project that I've been working on."

A picture appeared next to the video, depicting a… what was that exactly? Wait, that shape…. It was a starship. And it was a monster, as the scale had it at three kilometres in length! The video continued.

"I am confident that Fairy technology can construct such a vessel, although its size would render it impossible to hide. I have designed it to be able to fulfill many roles, including colonization, transport, exploration, and if necessary it can be fitted out as a warship. There are billions of stars out there Foaly, and it would stand to reason that at least one of those hosts something that wouldn't take kindly to us."

Foaly stared at the screen in slack jawed amazement. How the hell did Artemis come up with all this?

"However, this ship would be next to useless without a faster than light drive. I have mostly handled this particular issue as well. It involves entering a dimension above ours and using its different laws of physics to travel at much higher speeds than usually possible, and then dropping back into our dimension at the correct time. I have not actually finished this, so you will have to contact Minerva to access her dimensional research, which is the most important part of this project, and then build on that for the final stages. If this works, it will be the greatest advancement made by the peoples of Earth for many centuries, on par with the development of the steam engine or gunpowder. With it we can finally go beyond this planet. This is the by far the single most useful section of my project. Even if the ship isn't built, we can still make smaller models using the FTL drive. This will be my legacy, Foaly. It will serve as ample compensation for any of my crimes against anyone, human or fairy."

Foaly was now beyond amazement. As the schematics came up one by one, his pupils grew wider and wider in a fashion similar to those of a cat which had just smelled a freshly opened tin of tuna. An FTL drive… those were meant to be impossible without some seriously large mass effect fields beyond the Fairy ability to create by any means.

"Foaly, one last thing. The ship is so large that it would require a very large amount of resources. To get these, we need the Fairies to expose themselves to humanity by their own accord. It sounds insane, true, but I know that my people are mostly far gone from the barbarian tribes and infant civilizations of ten thousand years ago. We are ready. If the chrysalis plan fails, then you will have to make it happen. I'm sure that the lure of the surface will be too much for many people, but you will have to keep it under control and try to prevent any mishaps. If the chrysalis _does_ work, then I shall work alongside you in this endeavor. I can give your people the surface, Foaly. Do not disappoint me now. Ah, and the ship's name…"

Foaly had collapsed in his custom centaur chair.

"I have designated the first one of its class as the Spirit of Fire."

With that, the video player closed, exposing a message: **All files now available for viewing. Would you like to view them? Yes/no**

He shakily clicked **yes**. This opened what appeared to be a whole new program, with various tabs on the borders of the screen, labeled such things as _Power Generation, Internal manufacturing,_ and _Orbital Shipyard._ In the centre was a slowly revolving 3D model of the Spirit itself. Anyone who could have seen Foaly at that moment would have sworn that they could see tears in his eyes.

Holly had made sure to grab a fresh box of carrots before heading back to Police Plaza, and in doing so got many strange looks as she went through the supermarket, as someone in a highly advanced set of LEP armour doing such casual things would. Having arrived back at base, she made straight for Foaly's room. She knew she was there when she was confronted with a very advanced looking door, even by LEP standards. Punching in her personal code, removing her helmet for the retinal scan, and then a glove for the hand reader, she made her way inside.

"Foaly, I got you some carrots," Holly said, tossing the plastic box onto his desk. "Best brand I could get, thought that you needed the… Foaly, you hearing me? What're you lookin' at..."

Foaly moved the whole program to the holo table. The action revealed the immaculately detailed model of the ship, silently revolving over the table, while the tabs appeared on the edges.

"This," he said, "is the Spirit of Fire. It is what Artemis left to me."

Holly was now staring in much the same way that Foaly had been.

"And to think I only got half a ton of gold…" she muttered, setting her helmet on a nearby worktop. Not that she had used that gold, as it had originated from the LEP's reserve vault and so she had returned it. Apparently this action had been worthy of some compensation, and so she had gotten a pretty nice pay rise in return, along with Internal Affairs _finally_ getting off her backside. She gave a low whistle.

"Man, that's a big ship. Three kilometres… how _are_ you going to build that thing?"

"Oh, there's plans for that. Anyways, I've got a thing organized with Caballine after I check the clone, want to come?" Foaly said, turning off the hologram and grabbing his saddlebag.

"Yeah, I'm with you," Holly replied, "Right after I get out of this armour. Paperwork can always wait till tomorrow, when I'm not on patrol shift, right?"

 _Meanwhile, in a certain London warehouse  
_ "Damn, Mud Boy, you sure know how to get some real chicken!"

* * *

Please Note: The events of The Last Guardian went down slightly better than the book implies. Less explosions, Humans aren't hit too hard. Seriously, I doubt that Koboi would have been able to get that much penetration into the surface market in, what, ten years?


	2. An old friend

Chapter Two: An old friend

"So, this 'Hyperdrive' thing isn't finished?"

Holly was flying over the French Alps in a Hurricane class gunship, and was actually quite impressed at just how quickly that the humans had recovered from the Techno Crash. Then again, only the really advanced stuff was destroyed, which didn't make CERN or DARPA happy at all.

"No, not without Minerva's knowledge. I hear that you've been meeting with her occasionally?" said Foaly.

Holly dipped a winglet and knocked a small bit of snow off an alpine peak, in the process inadvertently setting off an avalanche. She winced and prayed that no one was trying to scale it at the time.

"Well, yeah, but only to check up on her, make sure that she didn't get into another mess."

"That can't be all," Foaly pushed with a quizzical tone.

"Okay, she invites me inside for tea."

"And?"

"Sometimes we play some games, pass the time."

"And?"

"Oh for God's sakes… sometimes we do dress ups."

"Wait, really?"

"No you numbnut, it stops at her video games. You wouldn't think it if you saw her, but she's actually a fairly prolific gamer as it turns out, when she doesn't have her nose to some book or apparatus. Gives me something to do on my visits at any rate."

"Oh. My map says you're getting close to the chateau. Just over the next peak." And with that, Foaly closed the connection.

There it was. The plateau chateau. Holly made a descent onto the dedicated helipad. She kept her shield off. Minerva didn't have any guards present except for a chosen few who were selected for their ability and also their willingness to keep a secret. Everyone in the building knew of the fairies, having been among the small circle that had been directly involved with the Demon research. Shutting down the gunship's repulsorlift, Holly climbed out of the cockpit and made for the door. Security chief Juan Soto, whose skills had greatly improved over the years, was there to meet her.

"Morning captain, no wingpack today? And I must say, that aircraft is quite the piece. Oh, what I could do with one of those…"

Holly walked past him.

"Well, maybe you'd get a go at it in time, eh Soto?" she teased, slipping off her helmet.

Soto put a finger to his earpiece. "Be advised, LEP captain Short is on the premises. Keep any visitors away from the western wing."

Entering the building, Holly went to where she knew that Minerva would be. There was a section of the chateau dedicated to her needs, with a lab, tech room, kitchen, accommodation and other such facilities. It was intended to be self-sufficient for her, away from distraction. It had an ultra modern interior, which matched the rest of the building's insides despite the castle like exterior. Her booted feet made quiet cloomfs as she moved across the thick carpet. Minerva came out of her room upon hearing Holly's approach. The French girl was tapping away at her ipad and muttering about getting Persia to leave her empire alone. Obviously her electronic nation building was still ongoing from when Holly had last seen her. She shut down the tablet and smiled at the Captain.

"Ah, Holly, glad to see you've made it. I got your message earlier, something about my research, yes?" Paradizo said.

"Yup, Foaly wants your dimensional techy stuff for a project he's got going."

"What sort of project?" Minerva asked.

"One that was inherited from Artemis."

The genius gained a certain look. "Come with me, I know just what project he's talking about."

The two walked to the lab. "About a year ago, I was using my equipment from the Demon capture program to try and get readings from other dimensions, to see if I could get a Nobel Prize off that. I wasn't really expecting anything to come of it, but after a certain adjustment to the sensor I started getting some very… unusual data. You see, I had found evidence of particles in another dimension that were clearly moving at speeds well beyond the speed of light. At first I was rather doubtful of this, as this sort of thing had been found and then proven false several times already, and I fine-tuned the equipment to ever increasing parameters in an attempt to find any faults in the experiments. I couldn't find any at all."

The pair rounded a corner in the corridor.

"Now, I could have released this information to the world and have gotten all the funding and reputation I would ever require, but I felt that I needed something bigger. So I contacted Artemis about it, and we started working together on the research regarding this phenomenon. It was then that he proposed the idea of exploiting this new dimension's faster than light properties for travel. We knew that faster than light communication was possible, thanks to your Subspace transmitters, but your people had told us specifically to not release that technology to the wider world, given the great risks of discovery through finding Fairy transmissions. Travel, though? We were never told what to do about that sort of thing."

Holly quietly snorted. Of course they weren't, it was supposed to be impossible. They entered Minerva's lab, which contained, among other things, a powerful bank of supercomputer hardware, several terminals for them, a pair of 3D printers for the on site fabrication of necessary parts, and in the centre of it all was a spire that stretched almost to the ceiling.

"This is my dimensional research equipment. I used it to work out the Demon arrival times and locations, but then someone deleted all my data and broke the computers. Thanks for that by the way."

"Hey, in my defence, I gave you the back ups that I had made!" protested Foaly over Holly's helmet loudspeaker, having opened the communications channel again upon hearing the comment that was clearly directed at him.

"You also burnt my diary to a crisp. It didn't even contain any research; it was literally just a normal diary. Any back ups for that?" said Minerva with a certain biting venom to her tone. All she got in reply was a guilty sounding "eehhh…". She huffed in annoyance and sat at a terminal. She pulled up a file, filling the screen with an interface that Holly couldn't even hope to interpret, instead opting to simply set down her helmet and point its camera at the screen, hoping that Foaly could probably make sense of the thing. Minerva pointed at one row of data spikes, numbers, and code.

"See these oscillations? Those are the representations of our mystery FTL particles passing through the area being read by the spire. Those speeds are incomprehensible, if not impossible. Make no mistake; you will need this data for the project, along with a spire of your own. I can send you the schematics for the hardware, but the results that are already here… I don't know if Holly's helmet can carry the files. They are quite large."

"How large are we talking?" asked Foaly. The number he got in reply was, indeed, large, even by Fairy standards.

"Well, good thing I brought a gunship today. Minerva, I'm going to take the data drives holding the stuff we need. I'll get a hover trolley to help move it all out." Holly walked away towards the door, only to be stopped by Minerva.

"Captain, your people won't be able to work with the data without my being there to teach them how to read it properly. I'm coming with you to Haven."

Holly thought for a bit. "Foaly, do we have clearance for her to come downstairs?"

"Minerva's part of the Friends in High Places program, which so far contains only herself and Artemis's team. She'll have the clearance, as long as the Commander is informed first," Foaly stated as he opened up the relevant paperwork to do just that.

"Huh, I forgot that we had that thing. All right then, Minerva, set the drives for transport. Remove them from the system; pull the plug, whatever it is that you do with these things. I'll be back in maybe five minutes."

 _Three and a half minutes later_

"How heavy are these things?"

"To be honest, I don't actually know."

There was a strained grunt as Holly attempted to heft the data drive. The thing barely even budged.

"Right then. That heavy." She tapped a couple of times on her wrist computer and was rewarded with a mechanical whine from her armour as it reconfigured underneath the plates.

"Powered strength assistance. Foaly was able to miniaturize the technology from our powered battlesuits, but it only works for a short time and isn't quite as strong. Should be enough to move this thing…"

She lifted the device with far less effort than before and set it down on the trolley.

"One down, nineteen to go…" the Captain muttered. She turned to Minerva. "You might as well pack your travel gear, no point ending up with no spare clothes or tooth brush."

About fifteen minutes later, Holly locked the now fully loaded down hover trolley into the cargo bay and stuck her head out the door of the gunship.

"Minerva, you totally sure you need to come? You have travel clearance, sure, but if you have anything that needs doing…"

"Oh relax, Holly, my schedule is clear for the next week. I think I'll be spending a couple of days in Haven. You know, seeing the sights. I hear it is quite a feat of engineering, and I'm also interested in just how the city was repaired in such a short time," Minerva assured as she walked past and took a seat in one of the bay's slightly undersized chairs that lined the inside edges of the gunship.

Holly shrugged and put on her helmet, syncing the systems to those of the aircraft.

"So, about your family… where are they right now? I haven't seen them around."

"Calais. Father and Beau got invited to a family friend's retreat on the coast up north, and I declined to come, mostly due to having a project at the time that I couldn't leave alone. That one is completed now, so no interference with our current job."

Holly entered the cockpit area and climbed into the pilot seat, keying the engines with a press of a button. Her HUD switched to flight mode, with an altimeter, speed gauge, armament monitors, scanner, and all the other things that could be reasonably expected to be used for controlling an advanced LEP aircraft like the GS-6 Hurricane. She closed the gunship's door and turned on the internal lights. Pushing away from the helipad, the gunship turned north and boosted away, carrying what could very well prove to be the keys to the future.


	3. Analysis

Chapter Three: Analysis

 _Haven Primary Production, formerly Koboi Labs_

" _Fabrication complete. Starting next queued item."_

A LEP marked crate rolled out of the large machine and was taken by a powerful robot arm to a waiting area, where it would be loaded into a cargo gunship for delivery to Police Plaza.

"Bing bang boom, detection spire made in minutes. How'd ya like that?" boasted Foaly, obviously quite proud of Fairy manufacturing technology. Minerva smirked and Holly rolled her eyes.

The group had come here for two purposes. Firstly, they had needed to procure a spire of their own. Secondly, Foaly had volunteered to pick up a shipment of new armour suits, given that he was already heading to the factory. The armour crate was already being slung in the magnetic clamp under the aircraft, while the spire's crate would be shoved into the internal cargo bay. The gunship's pilot was, naturally, Holly, as she had not trusted Foaly with the controls ever since hearing about his 'skills' when driving a simple ground car. His ability to pilot a flying vehicle was doubtful at best, despite him developing a number of their models in the first place.

"Let's just get this thing home," Holly said, heading for the door out of the assembly room. Minerva stole one last fleeting glance at the wonder of technology that was just out of her reach, and followed the Elf. Foaly checked a few diagnostics, found the machine to be operating at full function, and left as well.

 _Haven City airspace, en route to Police Plaza_

The cargo gunship wasn't as large or as unwieldy as some of the sky freighters that lumbered above Haven, but it still wasn't nearly as manoeuvrable as the Hurricane. Holly never really liked flying the thing, but at least she wasn't getting shot at. The ship's design was well balanced, though, which allowed it to fly effectively when fully loaded down with several tons of assorted supplies. She took the opportunity to point out various Haven landmarks as a sort of unofficial tour of the city to Minerva.

"See that half-dome embedded in the cave wall over there? That's the Weather Park. Big place, that dome is only the front end of it. Most of it is in its own cavern, and it has four sections simulating the seasons. Uses holographic tech to simulate the surface on a greater scale than the city's holo-sky. Great stuff, and admission is free as well. Might take you there later, how would you like that?"

Minerva pulled up a search on the console in front of her. The Weather Park was quite expansive, apparently. An area covered in natural looking snow and ice, another with rolling hills filled with green grass and trees, a set of drier hills leading down towards an unusually realistic beach, and a forest that seemed to be permanently in the autumn phase. That was apparently caused by genetic engineering, while nutrition to the trees was provided by a hidden system working away inside each trunk. The Fairies spared no expense in bringing a taste of the surface to their underground world.

The transport hovered over a drop off zone at Police Plaza and deposited the armour crate, followed by landing in its designated spot in the hangar. Holly dropped the rear ramp and shut down the ship, glad that the tedious piloting of the bulky thing was finally over. Foaly already had the crate's inbuilt repulsorlift online by the time she stepped into the cargo bay, allowing him to easily push it out towards the freight elevator. He set it to head down to the laboratories level when the other two got onboard, and on the way down he started typing a quick message on his wrist comm.

 _Mayne, get the data analysis computers warmed up, I have a package to plug in._

In came the response.

 _Got them coming on now. What is this package anyway? I don't remember you mentioning anything like this._

Foaly sighed. Holly idly tapped the Down button on the lift, in a futile attempt to make it go faster. Minerva had her pad out, muttering "Checkmate, Darius," under her breath.

 _You didn't need to know at the time. Also, tell the lab boys not to freak out, because we're bringing a human down with us._

 _What. :o_

 _Just shut up and do it._

The lift finally reached the research division, and the three took their cargo and set off down the corridor. Several LEP officers wound up double taking at Minerva's presence, and one of them even edged his hand towards his pistol. An extremely dirty look at him from Holly dissuaded that course of action. They entered the lab to find the computers online, but no one around. A sticky note on the primary console revealed why.

 _Sorry, Uncle, but the only way for these guys to not freak out was for me to tell them that their shifts were over early and that they could go home, so they should be gone by the time you arrive._

Foaly swore under his breath and tore off the note.

"Not to worry, I designed the spire to be simple enough for one person to use," Minerva said reassuringly.

The data drives from her systems at home were already plugged into the main computer through a series of adaptors and wiring that was already tangled like a nest of inebriated snakes. The techies had no idea as to what the hell that data meant, but they had all been quite surprised about the Human technology containing such advanced code. Foaly pushed the crate to a clear spot in the centre of the analysis room and pressed a button, making it pop open with a hiss and a clang. There stood the detection spire, shiny and silver.

The three stood and looked at it for a moment. Holly was the first to speak.

"…Guys? How are we meant to get it off the crate? I don't see any forklifts in here."

 _Twenty minutes later_

The sound of heavy, metallic footsteps and whirring came down the corridor. A pair of LEP officers on patrol turned around at the noise to see a heavy powered battlesuit stomping out of a lift and into the data analysis room, an area that wasn't exactly known for accommodating such heavily armed gear.

"What… what the hell _are_ they doing in there?" asked one of the bewildered officers to his companion. First they had seen Captain Short, Foaly, and a human that they didn't recognize as one of Fowl's crew go in there with a big crate, and now the Captain had requisitioned a bloody battlesuit and brought it down here?

"Well hey, would you look at that, our shift's over. Let's go," replied the other in a way that sounded distinctly like he was changing the subject and trying to leave the area before something exploded.

The first officer didn't argue.

"Alright, here we go!" Holly said as she grasped the bottom of the spire in her large mechanized hands. The suit was designed to be able to lift some pretty hefty loads, and the spire's weight shouldn't even strain it. She lifted the device slowly, trying to be as precise as possible while wearing an armour suit that was never built to be precise or subtle. She only had to move it off the crate, and once it was off Foaly pulled away the now-empty container, allowing Holly to set the spire down.

"Right, now we can get this hooked up," she said as she stepped away into a clear spot. She deactivated the battlesuit and let the plating at her back fold away, giving her room to hop out of the thing. She had been given a bit of trouble when she tried to sign it out of the armoury, as there hadn't been any sort of combat situation or testing imminent that would require the heavily armed and armoured suit. This whole business gave Holly a thought.

"Hey, Foaly, if you took the guns off and stripped a bit of the armour, I think we've got a good load lifter for the civilian market. Give me a cut of the profits for the idea."

"Uh, you do know that we've had suits like that on the market for the last two hundred years, right?" came Foaly's voice from the far side of the room, accompanied by the sounds of various cables being plugged into their sockets.

"Wait, we do?"

"Holly, you're not the sort of person who looks through industrial equipment catalogs."

"And you are?"

" Well, yes, actually."

"Neeeerrrd."

The final cable went in, and Minerva went up to the primary control console.

"Artemis, your legacy may change the whole world for the better…" she said quietly, as she activated the spire. It began humming softly, and a series of coloured lights winked on across its surface.

Foaly leaned towards Holly's ear.

"You think we should tell her about the clone?"

"No, not yet. She's already accepted his death, and if the clone fails the effects on her psyche could be unpredictable," she whispered back, with Minerva being too engrossed in her work to hear them.

After the initial set up, the three met in Foaly's lab.

"The power of your computers has made for an incredible upgrade in the spire's capabilities. I'm already seeing far more detections and with more accuracy than ever before. We can cross-reference this new data with my old findings and get our research done far faster!" Minerva said excitedly as she tapped on a borrowed Fairy wrist holocomputer.

"While the spire will gather and sort its results automatically, reading it will be more difficult. I've prepared a document containing instructions on how to do so for your analysts. I think the ones best suited to this work would be the ones who were involved in your Demon containment program. Also, try to bring in Qwan and Number One. Their knowledge of dimensional physics would be quite helpful."

She closed the holocomputer.

"I think my work is done for now. Holly, mind showing me around town?"

The Elf pulled up a map on her own holocomputer.

"I think I've got some ideas. How are you for some snow?"

Holly's armour had some pretty damn good internal climate control, and she could easily forgo the winter clothing offered at the entrance to the snow biome. Minerva, on the other hand, had to wait for the shop to manufacture a set of clothes in her size, with her status as a human making things quite awkward with the staff. She was getting a whole lot of odd looks from them and various bystanders, but they seemed to take pride in their clothing machine's flexibility, easily adjusting for the height of a relatively tall human. The snowy land was surrounded by a dome of finely tuned holograms that created a seamless simulation of a blue sky with a few scattered clouds. The technicians in charge of the systems could program weather schedules, allowing for a realistic cloud accumulation system to augment the snow dispensers hidden behind the holograms. This kept the area's snow in pristine condition without needing any big, obvious snow making machines spewing stuff all over the place.

The crunch of snow underfoot punctuated their conversation.

"I must say, Holly, this is quite impressive. Some places in human cities have similar facilities, but nothing on this scale or detail. You could spend _days_ just wandering about this park's biomes. And… hello now, is that Number One over there?"

Holly turned to see where her friend was pointing. Indeed, it appeared that the ugly-cute imp was here today as well, honing his telekinetic skills with the construction of a structure of some kind. He had seen them, too, and he bounded over to them, apparently forgetting about his work. This had resulted in him absent mindedly dropping a big pile of snow right on top of a pair of watching children, eliciting cries of surprise and then delight as their little heads popped out of the heap.

"Hey Holly, you've brought Minerva down here? Brilliant, I've been wanting to talk… communicate… converse… no, just talk with her. Qwan and I have been working very well together, and we actually went to a base on the moon to research its effects on Demon physiology! Oh, the low gravity, the lightness of it all! And it gave me quite a buzz. Almost wound up teleporting straight out to the surface once before getting a suit on. Anyway, what's up? What's happening? How's the… buttscuttler?"

Holly smirked.

"First off, One, it's called _scuttle-butt_. Secondly, you just buried a couple of kids. And thirdly, I think Minerva actually has a proposition for you." She nodded at the blonde.

"Number One, remember your work with Limbo and dimension theory alongside Qwan? Well, I've got a project with Foaly regarding a similar field, and you can really help move things along."

"I'll do it."

"But… I didn't even explain just what it is about."

"Sounds interesting to me, and that's what matters!"

Minerva sighed and pulled out her holocomputer.

"I'm forwarding a document with the details to you now. So… how about you show me how you've been doing with your construction effort here?"

And so an armoured Elf, a parka wearing Human, and a not-wearing- much-at-all Imp stood in the snow, building a structure that would serve as a fort for many children and their snowball fights.


End file.
